Friday, January 29, 2010

Shorter Obama @ House GOP Conference

Bobblespeak could have a field day with this stuff, but pretty much every question followed the same form. So as I did with House, M.D., let me try and reproduce the archetypal exchange between Barack Obama and House Republicans.

GOP Representative #1: We have ideas such as X, Y, and Z on issue 1. They will work! But it doesn't look like you've them, maybe it because Nancy Pelosi is a meanie and doesn't show them to you.

Obama: Well, I've seen them, and we incorporated X into bills we passed. But you still voted against those bills.

GOP Representative #2: With respect to issue #1, what about Y, Z, and W? They will work!

Obama: We looked at Y and Z, but you can't just say they'll work. I have to be able to go to outside to an independent expert who can tell me that they'll work. The debate has to be grounded in reality at some level. As for W, we just have a fundamental disagreement, and so far a bill that's not 100% of what the House GOP wants seems to be getting all no votes.

who we are

Nicholas Beaudrot is an accidental political observer living in Seattle, Washington. By day he writes software for Amazon.com, snowboards, and plays ultimate frisbee. By night [and morn] he posts to this blog, runs the Seattle chapter of Drinking Liberally, and tries to cook decent Italian cuisine. A graduate of Brown University with a joint degree in Mathematics-Computer Science, in late 2003 Nicholas felt the urge to put his knack with numbers towards a greater social purpose than winning his fantasy baseball league or taking up poker, perhaps in an act of penance for not voting in 2000. He has been spotted standing in line for Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, on the Atlanta area quiz bowl program "Hi-Q", and as a young boy in national broadcasts of the Christmas Eve service at the Cathedral of Saint Philip. If you play Halo 3, Team Fortress II, Rock Band 2, Catan, or a number of other games, he's on Xbox live as niq24601.

Neil Sinhababu is a philosophy professor at the National University of Singapore. It's a tropical island with good public transit and they're very nice about not caning him. He's fond of red-state college towns like Austin, where he got his PhD. Much of his research is in ethics — hence his alias "Neil the Ethical Werewolf," which contains the name of his philosophy blog. He has also published on Nietzsche and on how to have a girlfriend in another universe. His utilitarianism shapes his goals and tactical views, and makes it impossible for him to stay away from politics. At Harvard, he won a student government election by eating fire in each dorm room in his district. He'd be happy to use this skill to help Democrats in tough races. He likes drinking with smart people and dancing in altogether ridiculous ways. At his last project, War or Car, he showed that you could buy each US household a Prius or each panda a stealth bomber for the price of the Iraq War.